Sandrine Deternay
Country: France
Nominated by: Etienne Viénot (AURA-EE Head of EU affairs)
Summary of Nominee’s Contributions
Since 2009, Sandrine Deternay has overseen finance for the City of Albertville. In 2018, after discovering energy intracting through a meeting with Stuttgart, she championed its adoption in Albertville, leading to immediate energy and financial savings reinvested into the system.
Beyond cost reduction, intracting has fostered a collaborative culture, strengthening trust between decision-makers, services, and agents. Sandrine encouraged departments to propose efficiency measures, reinforcing a mindset of resource optimisation. She also secured additional revenue streams for the fund, amplifying its impact.
Building on this success, she launched carbon intracting, estimating alpine forest ecosystem services to justify investment in their protection. She now shares her expertise across France and Europe, training local authorities and promoting intracting as a sustainable financing tool.
Creativity and Strategic Vision
Albertville inherited a high-energy-consuming municipal asset from the 1992 Winter Olympic Games, making energy its second-largest expense after personnel. To address this, the city implemented a wood-fired heating network and school renovation plan and responded to ADEME and Banque des Territoires’ 2017 call for energy renovation financing projects.
As head of finance, Sandrine introduced intracting after discovering it in Stuttgart, persuading the mayor and elected officials to launch it in 2019. The system reinvests energy savings from efficiency actions into a dedicated fund, fostering collaboration between technical and financial services. She adapted it to engage all municipal departments, ensuring broad participation.
The first action—replacing conventional vehicles with electric cars—used fuel savings to upgrade road service equipment. This rapid reinvestment cycle built momentum, leading to public lighting renovations, photovoltaic installations, and building efficiency upgrades. The model encourages innovation across departments, rewards successful initiatives, and improves working conditions, such as reduced streetlight maintenance allowing workers to focus on higher-value tasks. Sandrine’s approach has made energy efficiency a self-sustaining, long-term strategy benefiting officials, residents, and municipal staff alike.
Impact
Since 2019, Albertville’s intracting fund has financed 64 energy-saving actions, including vehicle fleet upgrades (5), energy renovations (7), and electricity-saving measures (40) across public lighting, buildings, water conservation, and system optimisation. By 2025, these initiatives will generate 1,230 MWh of energy savings, cut fuel consumption by 11,300 litres, and reduce water use by 3,400 m³.
Under Sandrine’s leadership, the fund grew from €115,000 in 2018 to €650,000 in 2025, with expanded revenue sources secured in 2021. These include €202,000 from financed measures, €350,000 from the electricity tax, €20,000 from energy certificates, €15,000 from solar energy in schools, and €25,000 from depreciation.
Beyond Albertville, Sandrine actively promotes intracting nationwide. She trains financial directors through Afigese, France’s largest public finance association, and supports its expansion into the hospital and private sectors, broadening its impact.
Leadership
Sandrine has trained over twenty municipalities and municipal operators in France through the ACTEE programme and has contributed to the European Prospect+ programme, particularly in Belgium with cities such as Ghent, Antwerp, Jemeppe-sur-Sambre, and Etterbeek.
She insists that financial and technical managers train together, recognising this as the key to intracting’s success. Always refining the system to make it more practical and effective, she continuously integrates feedback from her training sessions, ensuring ongoing improvement and adaptation.